Education Secretary Arne Duncan is an advocate for more school funding, and we wouldn't expect anything less from that Cabinet secretary. But on a visit to Texas this week, Duncan carried that approach too far.

At a community college in El Paso where he met students who are taking advanced high school classes, Duncan said, "Yes to art, yes to music, yes to debate, yes to academic decathlon, yes to robotics. These have to be the norm, not the exception. We have to fund it."

That's a nice sentiment, and we'd love to see it happen.

But in the real world, school board members and taxpayers have to make choices. That can't just fund it all, which inevitably means saying no to someone or something.

Often that leads to cuts in extracurricular programs like the arts, and that's regrettable. But in the many school districts without enough tax dollars, the priority must be funding the basics first.